Bob Wheelock oversees the Al Jazeera Washington bureau, which is going through a major expansion as part of the network's new presence in the U.S. / Paul Singer, USA TODAY

by Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

by Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

Seven years after it arrived in the U.S., Al Jazeera is putting up its sign.

As it launches a major expansion to become a full-fledged cable news channel in the U.S., the Qatar-owned network believes animosity toward its sister Arabic-language news operation has waned. Or at least it has dissipated enough to allow Al Jazeera to splash its name across its new Washington broadcast center, which is currently housed in a dingy, unmarked office building.

"Imagine six or seven years ago, trying to find real estate for Al Jazeera in Washington. I'm sure it wasn't easy,'' says Bob Wheelock, a former ABC executive now in charge of setting up Al Jazeera America, as the network will be called. But now "we're going to have signage, you know, just like CBS, ABC, CNN, CBN, just like everybody else,'' he says. "We're psyched.''

With the $500 million purchase of Current TV from former vice president Al Gore and other investors last year, Al Jazeera bought a place on cable boxes in 41 million homes. Now the network plans to grow from a news operation of 13 people to 200 people working in cities across the country.

To do so, the network recently posted job listings for more than 100 reporters, producers, videographers and the like. It received 13,000 applications.

Because it is owned by the Qatari government, the network has deep pockets: It also has a name with painful baggage for U.S. viewers, thanks to its corporate sibling, the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network. And its forte, international news, has historically been a tough sell to American viewers.

"We hope to bring international news and more in-depth storytelling for the viewers. Do we think there's an appetite for that? Yes, we do,'' Wheelock says. "There's an appetite for news from elsewhere and for the documentaries we do and the type of coverage we do.''

Wheelock says the channel will have fewer chat shows than do U.S. cable news channels and will continue to have a strong international focus: 60% of its coverage will come from its U.S. and Latin American bureaus and the rest from Al Jazeera's networks overseas. "It's what we've become known for, and we have the assets to do it.''

Al Jazeera English launched in 2006, and until now, viewers could find the network on just a few cable systems or online. Many American Al Jazeera viewers, Wheelock says, have served in the military. "They've all been there. They've been to the places we cover heavily, and they want to know what's going on.''

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the Al Jazeera Arabic-language network aired videos from Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials accused it of promoting terrorism.

Time has mellowed the hostility somewhat, and Al Jazeera English's coverage of Arab Spring political upheavals brought it an appreciative audience in Washington - including then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Confusion with Al Jazeera Arabic remains - as do suggestions that the network goes easy on Saudi Arabia and hard on Israel.

"They're straight shooters as much as any major news outlet today. There is no unbiased news today,'' says Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The bias is in the selection of what stories you cover and how you cover them. Al Jazeera will bring its own bias, but it's no more or no less than what we're used to already in this country.''

Coleman says she watches Al Jazeera simply because it offers so much international news. "It has a lot more foreign correspondents in the field. If you want to know what's going on in Mali, it's going to be Al Jazeera that's covering it. We just don't have any more foreign correspondents on the ground in (U.S.) television the way Al Jazeera does.''

"The stigma that a previous administration painted the channel with is dissipating greatly. If you ... watch us, you'll like us,'' Wheelock says.

Al Jazeera English and the Arabic-language network are "two very distinct editorial channels. One caters to an audience in the Middle East, and one caters to an audience that is global,'' he says. "Most of the detractors, the people who have negative ideas or thoughts, have never seen the programming.''

The network is building a broadcast center in Washington, enlarging its space at the United Nations in New York City - "We cover the U.N. like most people cover local weather,'' Wheelock says - and planning for bureaus in Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco and five other cities.

Launching any new cable network is difficult: It requires getting cable systems such as Time Warner or Comcast to carry the network, then attracting both audiences and advertisers. "You can fail at any one of those, and you have to succeed at all three,'' says Larry Gerbrandt of the consulting firm Media Valuation Partners. When a channel changes hands, as in the case of Current to Al Jazeera, pre-existing agreements give the cable operator an out to drop the channel. That's the case with Al Jazeera America - Time Warner, a large cable system, says it may drop the network.

It will have to compete not only with CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC but also with BBC World News, which expanded in December into 25 million U.S. households. What's working in Al Jazeera's favor, says Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, is that the Middle East continues to be a big story. "You can see that being part of their marketing strategy,'' he says.

"We will never be the most-watched news channel in America, but we think there's an audience that's interested, is not afraid of information, is seeking more,'' Wheelock says